


Boundless Love

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Horror, Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam didn't say yes to Ezekiel, and a broken Dean struggles to come to terms with it.  </p><p>Needless to say, this is not a feel-good fic.</p><p>"Dean wrestled Sam’s body out to the Impala, where he carefully buckled him into his seat and tilted his head so it looked like any other time his brother had sat beside him in the Impala."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boundless Love

Dean stared vacantly at Sam’s dead body laying on Dean’s bed in the bunker. It seemed like he’d been here before, just like this, staring at Sam’s dead body, not knowing what to do, but it was different this time. Everything was different. 

Sam wanted to stay dead, and Death had promised him he could. Ezekiel hadn’t been able to convince Sam to stay alive, and Dean had been left there in a hospital room covered with sigils with a dead angel vessel and the body of his brother as different angels broke through the door. They’d roughed Dean up, demanding to know where Cas was, as Dean submitted limply to their abuse, hardly even aware of it, or of anything, except Sam’s ashen visage everywhere in his field of vision. They stared hard into his eyes, then let him slump to the floor, muttering about how he was broken and useless now, and didn’t know where Castiel was, anyway.

When he could get to his feet, Dean had wrestled Sam’s body down the deserted hallways of the wrecked hospital and out to the Impala, where he carefully buckled him into his seat and tilted his head so it looked like any other time his brother had sat beside him in the Impala, and drove them here, as Dean kept up a running monologue. Sometimes he even forgot Sam was dead until he looked over and saw that he was as inanimate as the seatbelt, because he couldn’t count the number of times Sam had sat silent there while Dean kept on talking and trying to act like they were brothers, friends, the only thing either of them had left in this world, while Sam harbored his grudges and his judgments and whatever else he held against Dean in that ongoing tally in his head. Fucking Sam.

So here they were in Dean’s room in the bunker, and fucking Sam had fucking abandoned him. He’d raged against him, would deny to his last breath some abuse he’d subjected Sam’s body to, trying to get through to him, but Sam wasn’t in there anyway, which was just like Sam, wasn’t it, to remove himself beyond Dean’s reach and deprive him of an opportunity to get his point across. Dean had fought with everything he had to keep his family together and alive, and here, at last, in the form of his brother, lay his failure. Sam was the demons and the angels and the monsters mocking him, he was his father’s unrelenting disapproval, he was his mother’s infinite absence, he was Sam’s ... Sam’s presence, his judgment, his sorrow, his humor, his smarts, his strength, his wisdom, his devotion, and the lack of all of these. He was Sam.

If there had been anyone else here, they were gone now. Kevin had gotten fed up with Dean’s abuse and taken off. When Dean finally thought to check on Crowley in his trunk, he was gone, probably freed by demons.

Sam started stinking up the place, and wouldn’t quit, no matter how much Dean yelled at him about it, so Dean covered him with heavier and heavier blankets to try to keep in the smell, and eventually, Sam finally yielded and the smell mostly went away, just like he always had. Sam had wanted to leave their family, but he had returned, not for Dad, certainly not for hunting, but for Dean. Sam had wanted a normal life--he’d even had one, for a while, with Amelia--but he’d given it up, for Dean. No one in their right minds would want to take Lucifer into the pit, but Sam had. Not for Dean--not just for Dean. He did it for all of humanity. Sam was a big thinker like that. Altruistic. Dean didn’t believe in such a thing, but now, with Sam’s story complete, looking back, Dean had to say that if there was anyone in the world who was willing to sacrifice what they wanted for others, it was Sam. It sure as hell wasn’t Dean, because whatever justifications he came up with, whatever moralizing he engaged in, in the end, Dean did it for Sam, for Mom and Dad, for family, for the people who gave him life, because if the people who made him exist ceased to exist, how could Dean exist? He just wanted to exist.

But Sam also did it for Dean, so Dean could live. If Sam couldn’t have the normal life he wanted, second best in Sam’s mind was for Dean to have it. Sam also did it because he felt bad about freeing Lucifer, trusting Ruby, all of it. Sam would accept anything to make things right. Anything. Dean used to think he was the same, but now he was realizing it was that he would fight anything to keep what was left of his family by his side, even if what he ended up fighting was Sam himself. What he ended up destroying. 

Sam’s words in the church echoed in Dean’s head. Dean hadn’t meant for all his barbs to go so deep into Sam, so deep they nicked his heart and bled away his will to live. He hadn’t meant to destroy his will to live! He’d only meant to destroy his will to _leave_. Turned out they were the same. Well, Sam could never leave him now. He tucked his body in under the blankets a little more tightly, tenderly, and stroked his brother’s beloved face, able to love him in this moment in a way Sam had never permitted the whole time he was alive. Sam had finally stopped fighting back.

~ The End ~

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up WAY creepier than I originally intended, but I like creepy, and SPN is after all a horror show, so when it went that way, I went with it. I also had a whole second half in mind, one with a significantly happier ending, but then I got to the point where this ends and it seemed like the perfect creepy ending, so I left it at that.


End file.
